LysmachiaMoon's blog: Finding "bottom"

I don't remember exactly who used to say this, I think my grandpap. If you had a horse or a mule that was a good worker, could really be counted on to pull a heavy load, he'd say "That boy/girl has bottom." The past two days here seem to have been designed to see if I had "bottom." Holy Moley. Yesterday I set out for the veg garden, skipping, pretty little seed basket in hand, thinking "Oh, joy. Today I'll sow carrots, and beets, and beans, and okra and corn..." Three hours of hard slog later, I got one row of beans in the ground. It was like stepping into a nightmare. Where did all those weeds come from?? I dug, I pulled, I hauled, I piled up weeds. The sun got hotter, my shoes got heavier. Mud. Mud and weeds. After I got the row of beans in the ground, I realized it was too wet to do anymore seeding. So I dragged out the section of fencing that I use for my main crop Roma tomatoes. It's an old piece of "sheep fencing" with very big spacing between very heavy wires. It came in a big roll of 100 feet. Even though it is now about 20 feet long, it still fondly remembers being in a tight roll and insists on sproinging back into that roll. Wrestled mightily with that for about a half hour, finally subdued it *pant pant cuss cuss*, hammered in a couple of fence posts. Then decided I might as well also set up the separate tomato cages for my salad tomatoes. I figured I'd pop them in randomly wherever there was space, mostly in the new black raspberry bed where a few of the transplants did not come up.

Remember back in the winter how tickled I was with my wire Christmas trees made out of stacked up tomato cages? Yes? Well. It took another half hour to just pry the darn things apart. Then the usual struggle to get them into the ground *pant pant cuss cuss* and hammer in stakes to further stabilize them. I got eight of them in, took me an hour, then dragged myself up to the house for a shower, tea, and a lie-down.

Remind me why I plant a veg garden.

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